MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 337 
high above him. Some spiders that fell and were en- 
tangled upon the pinnacles he took. They were of a 
kind that never enter houses, and therefore could not be 
supposed to have taken their flight from the steeple’. It 
appears from his observations, that this faculty is not 
confined to one species of spider, but is common to se- 
veral, though only in their young or half-grown state? ; 
whence we may infer, that when full-grown their bodies 
are too heavy to be thus conveyed. One spider he no- 
ticed that at one time contented itself with ejaculating a 
single thread, while at others it darted out several, like 
so many shining rays at the tail of a comet. Of these, 
in Cambridgeshire in October, he once saw an incre- 
dible number sailing in the air®. Speaking of his dr. 
subfuscus minutissimis oculis, &c. he says, * Certainly 
this is an excellent rope-dancer, and is wonderfully de- 
lighted with darting its threads: nor is it only carried in 
the air, like the preceding ones; but it effects itself*its 
ascent and sailing: for, by means of its legs closely applied 
to each other, it as it were balances itself, and promotes 
and directs its course no otherwise than as if nature had 
furnished it with wings or oars¢.” A later but equally 
gifted observer of nature, Mr. White, confirms Dr. Lis- 
ter’s account. ‘ Every day in fine weather in autumn,” 
says he, ‘do I see these spiders shooting out their webs, 
and mounting aloft: they will go off from the finger, if 
@ Ray’s Letters, 37. 87. Lister De Aran. $0. Lister illustrates 
the force with which these creatures shoot their thread, by a homely 
though very forcible simile: “ Resupinata (says he) anum in ventum 
dedit, filumque ejaculata est quo plane modo robustissimus juvenis e 
distentissima vesica urinam.” 
b De Araneis, 8.27. 64.75—.79—. Ibid, 79—. 4 Tbid, 85. 
VOL, II. Z 
